John Tooley Receives BPI's 2013 Tony Woods Award

Posted by Leslie McDowell on May 07, 2013

John Tooley (left) receives award from Larry Zarker, BPI CEO.

Last week the Building Performance Institute, Inc. (BPI) honored John Tooley of Advanced Energy by naming him the 2013 recipient of the Tony Woods Award for Excellence in Advancing the Home Performance Industry, at the Opening Plenary ceremony of the ACI National Home Performance Conference in Denver, Colorado.

Tooley was nominated by industry peers and selected by an independent panel of impartial judges for his integrity and commitment to quality assurance processes in home performance contracting.

Regarded as a pioneer in the world of energy efficiency with over 30 years of experience diagnosing and repairing more than 5,000 homes, Tooley trains builders and contractors throughout the United States. As a senior consultant for Advanced Energy in Raleigh, North Carolina, he has spent more than 15 years helping the top 10 builders in the nation implement quality process management, where they can guarantee heating, cooling and comfort in their clients' homes.

"There's no one in our industry who has advanced the delivery of quality contracting to customers more than John," said Larry Zarker, BPI CEO. "He stands alone not only in having examined thousands of buildings, but also, in examining the processes of contractors who improve them."

Tooley has made important contributions to virtually every technical standard the industry uses today. Most recently, he contributed significantly to the development of DOE's Standard Work Specifications (SWS). Part of DOE's Guidelines for Home Energy Professionals project, the SWS is an unprecedented collaboration of industry members compiling their collective knowledge in one place to support the development of a skilled residential energy upgrade workforce.

The Tony Woods Award for Excellence in Advancing the Home Performance Industry is an initiative from BPI in honor of Tony Woods, former president of Canam Building Envelope Specialists Inc. and ZERODRAFT, and a pioneer of the home performance industry. During his career, he served tirelessly as a volunteer board member with BPI, Affordable Comfort Inc. (ACI), as president of the Ontario Building Envelope Council and on more than ten standards committees dealing with air leakage control, air barriers, ventilation and more. Woods passed away after a battle with leukemia on May 8, 2009, just over two weeks after the inaugural award in his name was presented by BPI.

Building Performance Industry Hall of Fame Inductions

Also part of the ACI Opening Plenary session, three new individuals were inducted into the Building Performance Industry Hall of Fame. Nominated by their peers and selected by a panel of impartial judges, these individuals were recognized for their significant and lasting contributions to the building performance industry over the course of their careers. The new inductees are:

Joe Kuonen, Program Manager for Residential and Commercial/Industrial Programs at CLEAResult Consulting in Little Rock, Arkansas. Kuonen is known as an evangelist for home performance contracting. For over ten years he hosted a live radio call-in show on Saturday mornings to talk to people about their home performance problems. He conducts building performance trainings nationally, and has been a tireless champion for ACI. In just one four year period ending in 2008, he made over 30 presentations at ACI, and led ACI's inaugural Duct Camp webcast series in 2007. Meanwhile, he's had great success selling building performance packages, achieving annual sales of more than $1 million on multiple occasions.

Michael Blasnik of M. Blasnik & Associates in Boston, Massachusetts is one of the most respected energy efficiency researchers in the country. He has spent 30 years searching for the answers behind how buildings use energy. He has done many large scale evaluations of retrofit energy savings, developed algorithms for predicting energy use, and is credited with inventing zonal pressure diagnostics, an established method for diagnosing indirect air leakage paths in houses. He's currently working on impact evaluation for DOE's Weatherization Assistance Program and data analysis/modeling for the new Nest thermostat.

Rick Chitwood of Chitwood Energy Management in Mt. Shasta, California has had a major impact on the development of California's home performance industry as a contractor, a trainer, and an advocate and advisor to utilities, state programs and regulators. He is well known in California for challenging the state's building codes, particularly in the area of HVAC performance. Through his passion and persistence, he's made crucial contributions to the development of the most stringent modern energy codes that effect all new and existing home construction in the state. As a trainer he has mentored hundreds of talented contractors. He has helped prove to both new home builders implementing REACH code, and high performance home performance retrofit contractors bringing older homes up to and beyond code, that efficiency is possible, practical, and profitable in the real world.

Leslie McDowell joined BPI in October 2010 and holds the position of Marketing and Communications Director.

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